Designing a book to be re-read

No-not at all. I can't imagine spending time on deciding how to make a book re-readable. If a reader wants to read it twice- fine. Is he going to pay twice? Nope.

I'm with Lakey. I'd love for my books to give someone more each time they go back to it. I've spent an inordinate amount of my life mining Star Wars for more layers that may or may not be there. A lot of it is what the reader brings, so there's - along the lines of the thread on incluing - a bridge the bridge has started to built somewhere that the reader then finishes.

IIRC, Harl, you're something of a Gene Wolfe fan (well, I am so we'll operate from that assumption). I think of Wolfe as the best example of an author that makes rereading necessary, and, while it is the reason I'm such a huge evangelist for his works. But trying to recreate that sense of nested mysteries and enigmatic depth in my own writing has been a huge challenge and one that, as I improve, I come to realize is an unnecessary hurdle I've created for myself. I would love to write something that the reader feels compelled to reread from the start the moment they get to the end, but ultimately I would just want them to enjoy it the first time and leave it at that.

I think it's a happy accident. To give an example, I have read Sabriel countless times and other Old Kingdom books multiple times, but there are other things by Garth Nix that I can't even get past the first few pages with.

Yeah, I think it's one of those - write the book, put in on the market, write the next book - that's all that's under your control kind of things.

Wolfe writes books so that you can read them 100+ plus times and still not quite be able to unpack what's going on. And those are his fan-friendly works, don't even get me started on The Land Across.

I think there are two ways to do this, both are great if you can pull it off but a trap if you can't. One is to go for the M. Night-style 'What a twist' ending, that makes you go back and want to pour over all the cryptic details setting things up. I don't hate twist endings, but never seek them out, and believe the best ones are the ones the reader or viewer can easily figure out cuz, y'know, they make sense. Being able to guess a twist beforehand is not a sign the author failed in what they were trying to accomplish, rather, it can be a sign they succeeded.

The other way is to go full-on Kubrick, and pack everything so densely every scene is a pretty but disorienting Mandelbrot set that pulls you increasingly deeper. If you can do this and still be entertaining and readable, then you've built the better mousetrap. Some writers can do this, some can't, some can kinda do it but are still good, some aren't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't think you're doomed for wanting to shoot for this, and it's not like it just happened for the great one either, I'm sure they spend plenty of time banging their heads against the wall too. But, in my own experience, if you spend too much time trying to be tricky and cryptic and aren't having any fun doing it, it's probably not worth stressing over. I guess it's probably best left to be worried about it later drafts anyways

I think there are a couple of different things going on here.

1) A book that uses language and allusion in a sophisticated way is likely to reward re-reading by those who appreciate language. A book that includes a lot of chewy ideas and complexity will reveal additional layers of meaning to a re-reader. To the the extent you can design your text to tick these boxes, you can build a book that will support re-reading, analysis, and discussion more fruitfully than one that's all straightforward surface. For some writers this is an emergent property of their natural voice & storytelling. For others it's a function of deliberate craft. In either case it tends to reflect a high level of technical skill.

2) Most readers will only read a book once, even a book they like a lot. Many readers never re-read anything at all and don't see any reason why they should want to. No matter how re-readable a book you have written, relatively few of your readers will ever re-read it. You can't make them. If you write a book that's so obscure and hard to follow that re-reading is necessary to get anything out of it, you exclude most of your potential audience for this book and you will probably never get them back for others. That's an express route to the death spiral. Even Gene Wolfe writes books that a once-and-done reader can enjoy as a cracking good story even if they never go back for a second take.

Harlequin said:

Lol, diametrically opposed replies! Love it.

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Not exactly. Both make the point, from different directions, that it is up to the reader whether or not a book gets re-read. I don't think there's much a writer can do to provoke this, apart from writing the best narrative possible.

caw

I guess I should add books can be reread for different reasons, lotsa people reread HP endlessly to keep those 'lil British buddies in their lives, and I've read the Last Unicorn at least ten times and hope to many more. It doesn't always have to be about complexity.

it's neat if a book club chooses your book for discussion. i guess that is sort of rereading it while half-tanked on wine in a social fun way.

one book, for whatever reason i don't know, i kept trying to get through and 'get it' was Kerouac's ON THE ROAD. it took multiple attempts over years to find the handle to it before i finally got into the book and finished it. there was something about the writing, or the story, which kept urging me now and then to give it another chance.

I'm working on a prequel novella for my YA novel. It's about the heroine's parents and their lives and I could see someone wanting to reread the novel afterwards, once they know why these people are the way they are, and to reexamine those little clues again.

...

I write a lot of books with twists, so I always think about how those books would read if the reader were to go back to the beginning.

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I've done this with the most recent book(s) I'm writing and of course I'm thinking about scenes as they play in the moment, and then in reflection. And I'm thinking how sneaky I am, unless you have someone like Harlequin reading it, and she catches out the big twist right away. >.>

benbenberi said:

I think there are a couple of different things going on here.

1) A book that uses language and allusion in a sophisticated way is likely to reward re-reading by those who appreciate language. A book that includes a lot of chewy ideas and complexity will reveal additional layers of meaning to a re-reader. To the the extent you can design your text to tick these boxes, you can build a book that will support re-reading, analysis, and discussion more fruitfully than one that's all straightforward surface. For some writers this is an emergent property of their natural voice & storytelling. For others it's a function of deliberate craft. In either case it tends to reflect a high level of technical skill.

2) Most readers will only read a book once, even a book they like a lot. Many readers never re-read anything at all and don't see any reason why they should want to. No matter how re-readable a book you have written, relatively few of your readers will ever re-read it. You can't make them. If you write a book that's so obscure and hard to follow that re-reading is necessary to get anything out of it, you exclude most of your potential audience for this book and you will probably never get them back for others. That's an express route to the death spiral. Even Gene Wolfe writes books that a once-and-done reader can enjoy as a cracking good story even if they never go back for a second take.

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^^^Yes, to all of this.

Kjbartolotta said:

I guess I should add books can be reread for different reasons, lotsa people reread HP endlessly to keep those 'lil British buddies in their lives, and I've read the Last Unicorn at least ten times and hope to many more. It doesn't always have to be about complexity.

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True. Books that become emotional touchstones for readers also get revisited a lot.

The books I've always liked to re-read have two things: characters that I love, and love to spend time with; and satisfying plots. After that, I don't care if I know every twist and can quote passages from memory, I still enjoy seeing A and B get their hard-earned happy ending. That's also the kind of book I try to write. And I do read books over and over again. I very seldom keep a book unless I plan to reread it.

BethS said:

True. Books that become emotional touchstones for readers also get revisited a lot.

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Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is that way for me.

Sometimes magic just happens - a link between the written word and the reader. The story speaks to you at some primal level - it's hard to describe. Because it's such an individual experience I doubt that it can be consciously crafted by the writer.

My new WIP will have a twist at the end, and I'll (try to) leave very subtle breadcrumbs along the way that the reader (hopefully) will not detect along the way. IF the the book is read a second time, then they will be evident (if I do my job right). This is my first attempt at something like this, so I'll see how it goes.